The City of Las Cruces and the United Military Women of the SouthWest (UMWSW) will officially dedicate the Women Veterans Monument at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 10, at Veterans Memorial Park,2651 Roadrunner Parkway, Las Cruces, New Mexico. Here is the information provided by the city of Las Cruces:

Astronaut John “Danny” Olivas, Ph.D., P.E., an El Paso native, will be the guest speaker for the Alamogordo Downlink Project on Wednesday, February 21, at Alamogordo High School’s Tiger Pit. Olivas will speak to more than 1200 middle school and high school students that morning, talking about his experiences as an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.

Applications are being accepted on an ongoing basis for the Youth Scholarship Fund, offered by the City of Las Cruces Parks & Recreation Department. Here is the information provided by the city of Las Cruces:

Cybill Shepherd will join a panel representing different areas in the entertainment industry to discuss “Diversity and Inclusion in Entertainment” from 2-3:30 p.m. Thursday, March 8 at the Corbett Center Auditorium at New Mexico State University. The panel is one of many events scheduled as part of the 2018 Las Cruces International Film Festival presented by NMSU, which runs March 7-11.

The City of Las Cruces Parks & Recreation Department will begin registration for the 2018 Spring Break Camp to be held at Frank O’Brien Papen Community Center, 304 W. Bell St. The Camp is scheduled for Monday, March 19 through Friday, March 23. Program hours will be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Here is the information provided by the city of Las Cruces:

Registration for the Camp will begin Tuesday, Feb. 20, at the following locations during regular business hours:

Soon, residents in the Village of Hatch, and its surrounding communities, will have their very own transfer station where they can bring their recyclables for transport and their trash for proper disposal. The South Central Solid Waste Authority (SCSWA) has recently established a Memorandum of Understanding with Hatch that will get the ball rolling for a community asset to provide solid waste and recycling services that have never previously existed in the community 37 miles northwest of Las Cruces.

On February 16, 2018 at about 7:30 p.m., Las Cruces Police Department Officers responded to a call for assistance in the 2300 block of Sambrano Avenue. When officers arrived, they found a male subject unconscious in front of the residence. The male subject was transported to a local hospital with life threatening injuries.

The male victim, 29 years of age, later succumbed to his injuries at the local hospital.

Congressman Steve Pearce released the following statement after the U.S. Senate yesterday failed to pass immigration reform legislation along with a solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients:

Sen. Tom Udall, Sen. Martin Heinrich, Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, and New Mexico Rep. Angelica Rubio released the following statement in response to recent news of sexual harassment allegations in the Democratic Party of New Mexico:

Commentary: The latest proposed recall of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) methane waste prevention rule is a huge step back toward responsible energy development in New Mexico and across the country.

Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Trump administration have proposed to gut this commonsense rule that reduces natural gas waste, curbs air pollution and protects taxpayers, seemingly under the radar of most New Mexicans.

Commentary: Why do women earn less than men? A recent study by Matthew Wiswall and Basit Zafar has made progress on this topic. They presented a group high achieving college students attending elite schools with a set of hypothetical job choices.

The hypothetical jobs varied in their pay and work requirements. Some had higher pay but offered less flexibility and required long work hours. Other jobs had lower pay but offered a better work-life balance.

Commentary: Agriculture, automobiles, and railroads. These iconic industries have played a major part in making the U.S. a global, economic superpower. Each of these sectors is carefully following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations that just completed a sixth round in Toronto, Canada, and each has become more and more vocal about the value of NAFTA to their future welfare.

Commentary: Joint Economic Committee Democrats released today a report on the state of retirement in America. American workers are facing a crisis, the inability to retire with dignity after a life of hard work. Half of all American families near retirement have $12,000 or less in formal retirement savings. Congress should now focus on policies that broaden access to low cost, high-yield retirement savings options, strengthen Social Security, secure pension plans, and restore access to a stable and adequate retirement for an aging population.

Commentary: The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty condemns President Trump’s 2019 budget proposal that slashes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, by $213 billion. The proposal would replace SNAP food dollars for households receiving over $90 a month in benefits with a shelf stable box of foods. With the proposed 30 percent cut to the program over the next ten years, New Mexico would also stand to lose $207.9 million to the state economy.